CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Dave Mottershall loves the process and patience needed to cure meats and it’s a love which has brought him full circle to Terra Rossa in downtown Charlottetown.
To adapt to reduced seating capacity among other changing regulations around the coronavirus (COVID-19 strain), the restaurant is now a grocerant — a combined grocery store and restaurant — which opened its doors on Thursday.
The grocerant offers local produce and products, kitchen staples and fresh-made breads, as well as dine-in and take-away service.
Since opening, things have been going well, said Mottershall.
“We’ve had a lot of people come through, really interested in the market. I’m a very happy chef right now, with the amount of meat we’re selling.”
Already, they’ve had to adapt their hours to stay open later to better accommodate diners calling for reservations, he said.
“We opened quietly just to find our way and if people speak, we listen.”
Pivoting like the rest
When Bill Pratt bought a majority stake in the restaurant, then called Terre Rouge, in the fall, he knew he would have to overhaul the flailing business.
And he did.
Within a few weeks, they reopened as Terra Rossa and focused on comfort Italian food. A few months later, the pandemic hit and he knew he would have to do it again.
“If you don’t pivot and you try to do business like the way it was, you’re sunk,” said Pratt.
Elsewhere, in markets outside of Atlantic Canada, the grocerant trend has been established for a few years and take-away food has exploded in popularity, so to combine them with the existing restaurant made sense, said Pratt.
“The challenge now is people are still afraid to come to restaurants even though we’ve put all these things in place so that they’re safe.”
The next step was to find someone to run the business, as Pratt owns a number of restaurants in Atlantic Canada and is based in Nova Scotia.
At the time, Mottershall was trying to figure out how to pivot his own business, a salami and charcuterie wholesale shop in Montague.
Pratt, who had known him for years through chef Michael Smith, called Mottershall out of the blue about four weeks ago.
“I said to him, ‘Would you rather be downtown Charlottetown or in Montague to try to sell your product'?”
Mottershall saw the benefit and agreed to step up as chef and manager.
Full circle
It isn’t the first time Mottershall managed the location.
In late 2012, he was part of the team responsible for opening Terre Rouge in its original incarnation as a Bistro Marche, something not far off from the idea of a grocerant, said Mottershall.
“We had the full market in the front and the dining experience, patio, everything, so you could actually get a grab-and-go meal, a hot rotisserie chicken. All those things.”
Around this time, Mottershall got heavily into curing meats, which would eventually take him to Italy for three months to better learn the craft.
Since then, Mottershall opened and sold a restaurant in Toronto before coming back to the Island to work with Smith at The Inn at Bay Fortune as a butcher, as well as start his own business curing meats, which he sold at farmer’s markets.
Now, he’s ready for this new opportunity and new venue for his wares, he said.
“It’ll be a challenge. Where money used to be in a table and two chairs now has to be in a take-out container and just a few tables, so the profitability side of things has definitely changed, but we’ve decided to put this other factor into play that can help boost that back up.”
